Black Jade

It came to me that we would never find our way out of the Singing Caves if we stood frozen listening to such tormented songs. I wondered how we would find our way at all. And then I heard another song, or rather a voice, that dashed our hopes of escape. For Babul, high on his slab of rock above us, suddenly called out to us: 'Mirustral! Rowan! Pirro has given the warning! He heard shouts beyond the doors, and says that Sylar comes for us! What shall we do?'

What indeed, I wondered, as I looked at Kane?

And then a moment later, Babul shouted out again: 'The doorway! It is closing!'

We all turned to face the gleaming azure crystals on the curving wall above us. Master Juwain said, 'If we let ourselves be closed in, we'll be safe from Sylar and his men.'

And Kane snarled at him, 'You mean, entombed!'

'No — when Sylar finds us vanished, he'll attribute it to sorcery. We can reopen the door another time, and make our escape.'

'So you say. But what if Sylar does not attribute our vanishing to sorcery? What if that damn Pirro betrays us, and Sylar sets miners to chiselling away here and discovers this cavern?'

He did not have to add that if Sylar really belonged to the Order of the Dragon, then Morjin would be told of anything he discovered.

'Good pilgrims!' Babul cried out, 'the doorway!'

'So, I'd rather die trying to fight our way out,' Kane said.

'So would I,' I told him. Then I turned toward the stairs. 'Hurry, then, before we are trapped in here.'

We ran up the stairs to the shimmering doorway. The opening appeared to be gelling into something more solid. I urged everyone through and then jumped after them through the wall into the sixth or Minstrels' Cavern; it was like passing through freezing water.

'The doors!' Pirro's voice rang out from above us. He stood at the mouth of the fifth cavern shouting down to us. 'They're going to open the doors!'

I led the way running toward him. I had to pace myself up the stairs, and all the way back up through the other sloping chambers, lest the climb burn up my limbs and wind me. Then I came into the first cavern. There, in that hollow of gleaming crystals, I stood gasping for air. My friends joined me, one by one. At the front of the cavern, the iron doors remained shut, and I could hear no sound from beyond them.

'What shall we do?' Babul said again, whispering to me. 'We are few, and they will surely be many.'

Just then something banged the door outside, and there came the jangle of what sounded like keys.

'Form up!' I whispered, stepping closer to the door.

Kane, sword in hand, stood by my right side, while to my left, Babul and Pirro pressed close to each other and pointed their spears at the doors. Liljana, Master Juwain, Estrella and Daj gathered behind us. Liljana had drawn the long knife that she wore concealed beneath her robes, while Daj gripped his short sword. Farther to my right and behind me, Atara had stationed herself at an angle to the door. She had cut free from her cloak the three arrows sewn into it, and had nocked one of them to the string of her bow. She pulled back the arrow to her ear, somehow aiming its steel point in the direction of the crack between the doors. I wondered how long she could hold her great bow at full draw.

The sound of a key grating inside the iron lock of the doors sent a thrill of fear shooting through me. And Pirro whispered out into the dank, close air: 'I could not tell how many they are.'

I heard Kane whisper back to him, 'We'll kill them all few or many. We must, be prepared for anything.'

But I was not, despite Kane's fierce words, prepared for what awaited us on the other side of the doors. Finally, with much creaking, these great slabs of iron began to swing open. Torchlight spilled into the cavern, and limned against its red glow stood a single man. I blinked my eyes in wonder. I could not believe what I saw, although I was overjoyed at the sight that greeted me.

'My Lord!' a familiar voice called out to me. 'Oh, my Lord!'

It was Maram.

Chapter 32

We hurried out into the scoop of rock called the first cavern. The bodies of Elkar and Harun lay sprawled near the table where Sylar had collected our gold. Elkar's slashed throat oozed blood, while Harun fairly floated in a dark pool building out from a terrible wound in his chest. Just in front of the demon rock slumped another form: Sylar's, I guessed from the gilded armor. His body had been decapitated. Although I looked about the bloodstained cavern floor, I could not see his head.

'But how did you come to be here?' I asked Maram. We stood over Sylar's corpse gazing at each other in amazement. I noted the blood dripping off Maram's drawn sword. 'What happened?'

'Ah, Val!' Maram said as he embraced me with his free arm, 'I happened along just in time, I think, else you would have been dead, or worse.'

He explained that after arriving at the Inn of the Clouds in the dead of night, he had asked after us and learned that we had not returned from the Singing Caves. Thinking to surprise us, he had hurried after us, up the flagstone path leading from the inn beneath the face of Mount Miru. As he had approached the caverns' entrance, however, a cruel laughter had given him warning. And so, like a bear sniffing out a new lair, he had stalked up to the caverns in near silence.

'As I drew closer,' he told us, 'I hid behind that rock.'

He pointed at a large boulder ten yards away just outside the cavern.

Then he pointed at the bodies of Elkar, Harun and Sylar.

'I heard them boasting that they had locked you inside the caverns,' he went on. He pointed his sword toward Sylar's headless torso. 'That one was their captain, wasn't he? He said that they would be given a great reward for capturing you. I gathered that he had sent another of these guards for reinforcements.'

Kane sprang up to Maram and grasped his arm. 'Did you hear Sylar say where he sent him?'

Maram nodded. 'To Hesperu, to return this very night with one of the Red Priests and a cadre of Crucifiers. .'

'Did Sylar,' Kane asked Maram with a tightening of his fist, 'say the name of the Red Priest?'

Maram pried Kane's fingers from his arm and took a step back. He looked down at Sylar's remains beneath the demon's stony, grinning face. 'I waited for him to say it. Or for one of his men. But all they seemed to want to talk about was Mouth of Truth, as. they called it. Sylar lamented that they couldn't test it on you. I couldn't listen to that, do you understand? I couldn't wait forever, and so I did what I did.'

And what Maram had done, as Maram now told us, was to charge from out behind his rock with his sword in his hand. Before the hapless guards realized that a fierce warrior was upon them, he had slashed open the astonished Elkar's throat with a lightning cut of his sword and then thrust its point through Harun's armor at the shoulder joint, deep into Harun's chest. He had then turned upon Sylar.

'For him,' Maram said, nudging Sylar's body with his boot, 'I didn't have to use my sword.'

'Then what happened to him?' Daj asked.

'I grabbed him,' Maram said, 'before he could draw his sword. He fought like a fish, but I, ah, subdued him. I asked him the name of the Red Priest, but he wouldn't tell me. And so I hammer-locked him, and pushed his head inside this.'

Maram slapped his hand against the smooth rock carved with the demon's face. I noticed the fresh blood staining the lips of of the Mouth of Truth.

'You put Lord Sylar inside of Old Ugly?' Babul called out.

'Just his head and neck,' Maram replied. 'I told him that I'd let him go free if he gave me the Red Priest's name and told me where Tarran was bound; if he didn't, I told him I'd break his filthy neck. I did almost have to break it, too. Finally, though, Sylar gave me a name: Ra Jaumal. I knew he was lying the moment he spoke it.'

According to Maram, as soon as Sylar had spoken the name of Ra Jaumal, the demon's eyes had flared bright